Way Back Wednesday: The Underworld

April 8, 2015April 6, 2015 / kaitlinbevis / Leave a comment

When it comes to the Underworld, there’s been no shortage of sources that could have influenced the way I saw it. Here are a few of the more prominent examples that spring to mind.

Hell

I live in the Bible belt so this imagery was unavoidable. I made a point to stay away from the more stereotypical hell-scape stuff, given that the Greek Underworld was an entirely different place, so the biblical version of Hell didn’t so much influence what my Underworld was like, but what it wasn’t.

The Inferno

As an English grad who lives in the Bible belt this was another set of imagery I couldn’t escape when considering the Underworld for my book. Especially since Dante linked the Greek Underworld with the biblical one. Much of Tartarus was modeled after Dante’s vision.

The Forbidden Games Trilogy

When it came to Tartarus, what wasn’t inspired by Dante was inspired by the bleak outside of the Shadow World, right down to the shambling, creepy figures and the hot/cold terrain. That imagery really stuck with me all these years later. I really owe L.J Smith a debt of gratitude. I read so much of her work growing up. She’s the author that inspired me to become a writer. There’s this theory in writing that there’s always some writer you’re subconsciously inspired by/ holding your work up against. For me that is absolutely her.

What Dreams May Come and Hook

Here is no doubt where my living realm based layers of the Underworld were no doubt inspired from. You have the happy layer and the creepy layer but it’s all one afterlife. I have to be honest, I watched this movie once, ever, when I was like twelve or thirteen years old, so all I really have are basic impressions that for some reason keep mashing up with Neverland from Hook. So that unlikely combination is likely what inspired the whole if you imagine it, it will be there thing that existed in my Underworld.

The Amber Spyglass

The Underworld in this book was clearly inspired by Dante, but it held truer to the Greek version. Again, this is more a vision of Tartarus than of Elysium or Asphodel, but the bleakness of the landscape stuck with me long after I set down this book.

The Lovely Bones

This haunting book no doubt inspired the normalcy of the suburbs in my version of the Underworld. If you haven’t read this book, go read it now, before you have children. Because it’s honestly an amazing story and an incredible look at death. I just can never, ever, ever read it again now that I have a daughter.

What do you think of when you hear Underworld? And what have you read or watched that inspired it?

For Real Friday: Strong Female Characters

April 3, 2015 / kaitlinbevis / Leave a comment

On Wednesday I explained that as far as I’m concerned, Artemis was the original strong female character. When I think of modern day examples that best reflect Artemis, Buffy the Vampire Slayer springs to mind. But lately, strong female characters have gotten some bad press lately.

This article and this article (seriously read them, they’re great) explains the issue with the strong female character better than I could, but it basically boils down to the fact that strong female characters have become a gimmick. Someone the hero can impress and use as a bench mark to move past or someone who’s given a moment of beating someone up to make viewers happy before the hero has to save her. This, by the way, is not Buffy the Vampire Slayer at all and by the way, Buffy does not fall into the other strong female character trap, which is to make her the only type of female character. Buffy is strong but she’s also multi dimensional, there’s more to her than that she can kick but and on top of that, the cast is exploding with examples of different female characters with different strengths, weaknesses, and complexities.

If the Greek myths had been written today, I’d want Artemis to be a Buffy figure. A single, strong and otherwise complex character who exists to do more than just motivate the hero and who is just one example of what a goddess could be like out of many. Part of my motivation for writing the Daughters of Zeus series was to do just that.

Persephone is an (I hope) complex character with different strengths and weaknesses. People in the book keep calling her strong and brave and all these wonderful things that shallow-strong characters are supposed to be, but she’s the first to point out that they’re wrong. She’s not strong in the physical sense, not because of lack of ability, but because until she ended up down in the Underworld, it never occurred to her to try to be. She’s not the brightest crayon in the box but she’s resourceful. She’s naive and idealistic and that naive idealism helps and hurts her at different points in the plot. Her plot is a romance and but she exists outside of her relationship with Hades. She has strengths but she also has flaws, enough of them that some readers can’t stand her, which is a great thing. A character that everyone loves is a flat character. Universal appeal doesn’t exist in three dimensional characters.

Aphrodite isn’t a strong character at all. She’s weak. She’s one-hundred percent defined by her relationships. She’s confident to a fault and on the surface seems very shallow, but inside she’s dealing with a lot of pain and that confidence and those relationships are the only thing holding her together while she deals with that, and that’s okay because there are people like that and they deserve to see themselves in fiction too. Also, she’s not static, she’ll grow as her series does, but in ways that are very different than Persephone.

Artemis is strong and confident and unlike both Persephone and Aphrodite she’s not trying to live up to some self-imposed ideal, she’s completely happy with who and what she is. Her arc won’t deal with growth but with other things I can’t get into because of spoilers. She’s had relationships but they don’t define her and they aren’t important enough to the plot to bear much mentioning.

There’s different ways to be strong and there’s room for all of them in fiction. Don’t settle for shallow “strong” characters who don’t even pass the sexy lamp test.

Spring Has Returned

March 20, 2015March 21, 2015 / kaitlinbevis / 5 Comments

Today is the first day of spring, and in my universe, Persephone’s birthday. In the original myth, it’s the day she returns from the depths of the Underworld to rejoin her mother in the living realm. All in all, a fitting day to share my good news. 🙂

Persephone is coming back.

The Persephone trilogy has been picked up by Belle Bridge Publishing. As always, the trilogy will be available in e-copy and audio formats, but for the first time ever, Persephone will be available in print. I don’t have a specific date yet, but I’ve been assured the publication date won’t be very far out.

I’m really excited to be a part of Belle Bridge because I’ve been a major fan of their books for a long time, especially Parker Blue’s Bite Me series and Marilee Brother’s Moonstone series.

I’ll post more news as I get it, but I’m really excited about this 🙂 Thank you guys all so much for your patience and for your advice and for all your support when Musa went under. You have no idea what your emails and tweets and comments meant to me. You guys are amazing.

Stay tuned for exact dates and all that fun stuff. You’ll all get news as I hear it

Mythology Monday: Boreas and Oreithyia

March 16, 2015March 30, 2015 / kaitlinbevis / 1 Comment

A shift in my teacher’s tone caught my attention. He rolled up the sleeves of his blue dress shirt, moving his hands as he told the story. He leaned forward, voice becoming ominous.

“Oreithyia danced upon the river bank, unaware she was being watched.”

A cloud passed over the sun, bathing the class in sudden shade. Goose bumps rose on my arms as the temperature plummeted. I flinched when a gust of wind knocked over the legal pad with a thump. The yellow pages fluttered open, sending loose scraps of paper floating toward the lake.

“Suddenly, the God of Winter, Boreas, swept her away in a cloud and…” Professor Homer faltered at the sight of the escaping papers. “Married her.”

I rolled my eyes. At sixteen, it wasn’t as though Melissa and I were clueless about what happened to poor Oreithyia. Beside me, Melissa nodded as though I’d spoken aloud.

Professor Homer continued. “For nearly a century afterward, the people of Athens traced their lineage back to Oreithyia and Boreas, claiming to share the blood of the gods.

~@~

That’s pretty much the myth. So why include it, verbatim in Persephone?

The Persephone myth is one of the first myths people learn because it explains the seasons. If Persephone didn’t exist until modern day, there would need to be a myth to substitute as an explanation for winter. Using the myth as *the*explanation for winter was supposed to alert my readers we were in a world where Persephone’s myth hadn’t happened yet because she didn’t exist yet. Judging by the number of reviews wondering why Persephone doesn’t recognize her own name in mythology, I should have made that a bit clearer. I’m still trying to figure out something I can slide into the next edition of the book that indicates that in this universe, some myths (the older ones involving the big six) have happened while others are still in the process of unfolding. But it’s not like something I can have Persephone think about or casually point out in dialogue. The people of this world don’t know they’re missing myths.

This myth was similar enough to the Persephone myth to fit in nicely. Plus the god of winter makes would be a natural enemy of the goddess of spring, and Boreas is associated with the sky, which was logical given who we was working for. So luckily, it worked on a lot of levels.

For Real Friday: Scapegoating

March 13, 2015March 6, 2015 / kaitlinbevis / Leave a comment

Helen of Troy

Troy fell because of a beautiful woman. At least that’s what we’re taught. Helen was a trojan scapegoat and if you go back before her the entire thing was the “fault” of the goddess Nemesis. Rarely is Paris blamed. Even more rare are the tensions between the two factions involved in the war brought up.

Helen spent her entire mythical life reduced to an object. She was a thing that Theseus wanted, she was a prize Paris won, she was a face that launched a thousand ships, she is the thing that destroyed Troy. Rarely is she viewed as a person with thoughts and wants and agency. Rarely is the reality that she was a young woman who was abducted since childhood with an alarming frequency brought into the story. Modern day adaptions love to make Helen a lovesick girl unconcerned for the fate of her people. She’s painted as this spoiled, vain, selfish creature and everyone forgets it takes two to tango. That as prince of Troy, Paris had a greater responsible to consider the impact of his actions, and that’s assuming she was abducted with consent. I almost never see the Trojan War portrayed as a horror story where Paris abducts an unwilling woman. I wonder why that is?

Society loves to blame the victims, especially when they’re women. If a man cheats on his wife it’s his wife’s fault for not being enough and his mistresses fault for tempting him. When a man rapes a woman society bends over backward to pin the blame on her. What was she wearing? Why was she there? She shouldn’t have tempted him.

Though Helen is by no means a major character in my story, I tried to portray her as a three dimensional character and a victim. A person with limited control in a bad situation that just kept getting worse. I tried to address the guilt she would feel, rightfully or not. I don’t know if I accomplished that, but one of my goals is to eventually do a duel-POV prequel with Cassandra and Helen to cover the Trojan War my way.

For Real Friday: Kidnapping

March 6, 2015June 11, 2016 / kaitlinbevis / 1 Comment

On Monday, I shared a scene from an early chapter in my novel, Persephone where Pirithous attempts to abduct Persephone from her mother’s flower shop. Kidnapping is one of a parent’s worst fears and missing children are one of the most sensationalized types of news stories in America. The constant media coverage and books and movies. It was also a pretty frequent plot point in children’s media for a huge chunk of my childhood. The constant coverage has likely contributed to the rise of helicopter parents and an entire generation of slightly paranoid children.

Seriously. Every friend I’ve asked about this said they had kidnapping “plan.” For me, it was small things that were mostly games. I’d see if I could untie knots or unlock doors in the event I was even kidnapped. Another friend grew up memorizing her location and major landmarks she passed in case she got a chance to use the phone to call 911. Everyone went through stranger danger planning and some extra lucky children like myself were told to avoid hallways in hotels when we were traveling because “a stranger could just pull you into a room and I’d never see you again, Katie.” Another friend was told she could never have a convertible, not because of price mind you, but because “someone could just hop in the car and take you away.”

What’s sad is how crazy that’s not. Everyone has a story like that. The fear of kidnapping was a constant presence in my generation’s childhood and one that is no doubt being passed along to our children.

It’s also incredibly unlikely. I included the threat of abduction in my book because, hello, Persephone. Both attempts are a plot point in her myth. But I did so with mixed feelings because I didn’t want to add to the hysteria.

Most abductions are committed by acquaintances and family and are found within hours of their abduction alive. Putting this in real numbers, out of 800,000 kids reported missing during the peak of the kidnapping hysteria in 1991, only 115 of them were kidnapped by strangers, and kidnapping stats are going down. The rest were committed by family and acquaintances and the vast majority of those children were found within hours alive.

Now those 115 kids did fall into the scary pattern of being mostly female, mostly grabbed outdoors or lured into cars and roughly twenty of those children didn’t survive the abduction, so yes, there was reason to fear and it’s not like acquaintance or family kidnapping is a good thing but the sheer amount of fear everyone had for an outcome less likely than getting struck by lightning is in itself pretty scary.

Mythology Monday: Demeter

February 2, 2015June 11, 2016 / kaitlinbevis / 6 Comments

I kept trying to get over seventeen years of deception. But somehow knowing it was in my best interest wasn’t enough to forgive her for keeping my divinity…my life…everything about me a secret. She’d let me think I was human, but I wasn’t, and some part of me had always felt different from all the people around me, so I’d just grown up thinking I was a freak. That something was wrong with me. As much as I wanted to make things right between me and my mom again, I didn’t think that was something I could get over.

I took a final look at my mother’s silhouette in the doorway and tightened my grip on the steering wheel.
Hades followed my gaze. “She was trying to protect you.”
“I know. That’s the worst part. I’m just tired of her deception. I mean, keeping the fact that I was a goddess from me my whole life was one thing, but to still keep something from me? That’s just…” I couldn’t put words to the feelings that were bothering me.
“You wanted her to be as honest as you’ve always perceived her to be.”
“Yes.”
“It could be worse.”
“How?”
“My father ate me.”

~@~

The treatment of Demeter in retellings is always interesting to me. I’ve read versions where she’s an overprotective helicopter mom who loved her daughter more than words can express, and I’ve read versions where she was more possessive of Persephone than caring. Persephone was hers and no one else could have her. But she’s always, always, always, portrayed as an extreme, borderline irrational, over-protective parent, and that never made sense to me.

It is true that Demeter kept her daughter from the rest of the Pantheon, and she turned down several offers from gods to court Persephone. But the Pantheon was horrible. Almost every goddess in Greek mythology suffered rape or sexual assault, including Demeter, who was raped by Poseidon in horse form (don’t ask). The gods of the pantheon lied, cheated, and fought with no regard for the people caught in the middle. Demeter’s experience with the gods of Olympus was not a pleasant one. It makes complete sense she’d keep her daughter as far away from them as possible.

When Demeter’s daughter went missing, she scoured the earth in search for Persephone in the guise of an elderly woman named Doso. At one point in her search, she stayed with a lovely woman who had an infant son. As a thank you, Demeter planned to make the child immortal by anointing him in ambrosia and burning away his mortal self over an open fire. His mom walked in on her baby roasting over the flames and flipped out. Demeter backed off the immortality bit and instead taught the child ( Triptolemus) to farm then returned to her search.

See, At first she didn’t know that Persephone was in the Underworld or that Zeus had a role in putting her there. And for a while, no one told her. That seems cruel, and it is, but here’s the thing about Demeter.

She was terrifying.

Demeter once cursed a man with eternal life an eternal hunger because he trampled her fields and threatened one of the Melissae (Priestesses of Demeter). She was an incredibly powerful goddess that predated the Pantheon. The Greek’s and Roman’s worked her in where they could, which is why her role varies from telling to telling, but one thing came across loud and clear in every myth. If you mess with Demeter, there are serious consequences.

Eventually, Demeter did discover Persephone’s whereabouts, who told her varies depending on the myth, but the first thing the proud goddess did upon finding out was ascend to Olympus and ask Zeus to help her retrieve their daughter. When he refused, she begged, not realizing Zeus was half the equation that put her there.

That’s when she learned the terrible truth. Her daughter had been sold to the Lord of the Underworld by the very father Demeter had worked so hard to shelter her child from. Demeter was enraged so she hit Zeus where it hurt. His worshipers. Demeter showed Zeus exactly why it was a bad idea to mess with her. She needed to show him how much the pantheon depended on living in her good graces. So she went on strike. Crops stopped growing and people started starving. Tragic for the people, but Demeter was speaking the language the gods understood. Collateral damage. It worked. Zeus relented and sent Hermes to retrieve the Goddess of Spring.

Unfortunately, since Persephone had eaten the food of the Underworld, she couldn’t escape completely. She had to return every year for 3-6 months depending on the myth. During that time, Demeter mourns and crops stop growing.

In my version of Persephone, Demeter shelters her daughter by not telling her that she’s a goddess. She wasn’t planning on keeping it from her forever. Just long enough for her to have a normal childhood. Since in my version, the gods are mostly dead and the humans are unaware of their existence, Persephone needed to know how to blend. Demeter deceives Persephone in a lot of ways, violates her trust, and actually put her child in danger due to her ignorance, but she did it out of love. I tried to keep it balanced. I tried not to portray her as an extreme helicopter mom or an over possessive proud woman living vicariously through her daughter, but as a mom, struggling to make the very best choices for her child. Sometimes succeeding, and sometimes failing.

I try not to judge Demeter in either my version or the original myth. If my daughter went missing, I wouldn’t hesitate to scorch the earth if I thought that would bring her back. If telling my daughter the truth could possibly hurt her, I’d hesitate. What would you do in Demeter’s place?

For Real Friday: Persephone

January 30, 2015June 11, 2016 / kaitlinbevis / 1 Comment

There’s been this thing going around online where Mom’s take pictures of their houses in whatever shape they happen to be in and post it as For Real Friday. It’s to combat the unrealistic expectations of perfect super moms. It’s awesome. But I wanted to put my own twist on it by discussion the real issues reflected in the myth of the week. Myths, stories, they do that. They both inform and reflect the culture around them. Stories have always confirmed our worst fears, or worst faults, and our values.

These For Real Fridays are going to talk about the reflection of modern culture in modern retellings of the myth for a couple different reasons. First, I’m interested in how the myths resonate with us now. The now is why we’re still retelling the myths, reshaping them to match our worldview. Secondly, I’m not an expert on Greek culture. I know a lot about the mythology and a passing bit about the culture but not enough for an informed piece of writing by any means. If you’re interested in learning all the potential readings of the Persephone myth and the culture they reflect, I highly encourage you to read the book Life’s Daughter/Death’s Bride. It’s amazing and incredibly informative.

Monday, I told the original (and take that word with a grain of salt. Myths work like the telephone game. They change a bit with each retelling) Persephone myth. I also discussed how I think this particular myth inspires so many retellings because it feels incomplete. It’s missing Persephone’s voice. On Wednesday, I listed off several modern adaptations of the myth that more or less addressed that issue.

Part of the reason I feel the Persephone myth feels off to modern readers, why Persephone isn’t given a voice, is because she’s treated like an object not a person. She’s a prize for Hades, something to be given away by Zeus, something to be stolen from Demeter. Unfortunately that world view isn’t limited to ancient Greece. Women are constantly objectified in the media. There’s a great Ted Talk that goes into the realities and consequences of that fact far better than I ever could. One of the consequences of this type of objectification is that it encourages rape and rape culture.

Rape is the obvious real world issue presented in the Persephone myth.

When I started outlining Persephone, I knew I wanted Hades to be the good guy. To do that, the mere implication of rape had to be removed from his part in the myth. He couldn’t be a good guy if that was part of his character. But beyond that I struggled. Did I want to completely remove the threat of rape from the story? On the one hand, yes. Rape and threat of rape is used to raise the stakes in almost every major plot line be it TV, movies, video games, or books. The way it’s portrayed in most cases is a problem because it glorifies it. Rape shouldn’t be an exciting plot twist that resolves within an episode or two. It also shouldn’t be presented as an inevitable reality. But on the other hand rape is a reality. One in five women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetimes which in’t surprising given that one in three men admit they would rape a woman if they thought they could get away with it. As rape is a very under reported crime, it’s likely that particular statistic is not an exaggeration. One in five women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetimes which in’t surprising given that one in three men admit they would rape a woman if they thought they could get away with it. . Adding insult to injury, victim blaming and cover ups are prevalent with rape. Rape is a very under reported crime. Victims are silenced and shamed either by their abuser or by society or both. I didn’t want to be a part of that silence either.

There’s a lot out there saying that Persephone wasn’t really raped because the culture viewed rape differently, pretend abductions were part of ancient Greek marriage rites and she was a willing participant, or the word rape meant something else entirely (to seize, snatch, or carry off) in the original Greek, but the Roman interpretation put the sexual spin on it. To me, that felt a lot like the way real life rape victim’s accounts are rewritten to show that they actually did consent. If they hadn’t wanted it, why would they have been there, drinking that or wearing this. Why wouldn’t they have said x or y? Clearly she was asking for it.

***Disclaimer*** As someone who studies this stuff I have to point out there is merit to the theory that Persephone was not actually raped but willingly married. More than merit actually. There’s few bits of the myth that could be interpreted to mean Persephone went to Hades of her own volition (brilliantly reimagined in the novel Radiant Darkness) and ate the seeds on purpose. I’m not trying to say that those bits of facts are victim blaming, but that to me, a modern reader living in a modern culture, they made me think of that, so I wasn’t comfortable writing that version of the myth either. ***

So, I took the middle road. There’s a threat, but it’s not from Hades. That threat doesn’t function as an exciting bit of pacing, it alters my character and her view of the world, and the character responsible for the threat is not treated with moral ambiguity. As the series progresses there’s a lot more implications of, direct threats of, and featured characters who are victims of rape. At no point are these portrayals meant to be exciting. I’m writing about Greek mythology, rape is a pretty central theme and sugar coating that is just as harmful as using it as an exciting plot point.

Rape, objectification, and rape culture are just a few of the for real issues brought up in the myth of Persephone. Can you think of anymore? Or can you expand on the way something in the myth touched on these real world issues? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Way Back Wednesday: Persephone in Popular Culture

January 28, 2015June 28, 2016 / kaitlinbevis / 2 Comments

There’s a reason myths survive for centuries on end. Something within them resonates with us, so we change them, twist them, adapt them to fit our current mindset and culture. Personally, I think the Persephone myth has resonated so much and sprung so many retellings is because the original tale feels incomplete. We don’t get Persephone’s perspective. I went over the Persephone myth on Monday. Here, I’m going to share some of my favorite variations on the myth. I’m limiting this list to stuff that’s come out in my lifetime. Ovid’s twist on the myth was great and all, but looking at the way we’re transforming the myth now, can tell you a lot about what’s changed from now to then and what hasn’t. The retelling I grew up with shaped my view of the myth and influenced the way I changed my own.

So here are the top five favorite Persephone retellings that influenced my view of the myth when I wrote Persephone. Chime in the comments below with your own 🙂

Beauty and the Beast

Yes, this is based on the classic fairy tail, but the classic fairy tale has strong roots in the Persephone myth (and the Psyche myth and about a dozen others, but right now we’re not focusing on that one) and the Disney retelling took it a bit further. Think about it, you’ve got your beautiful, bright, sunshiney girl (come on, Belle’s color is even yellow) imprisoned over a misunderstanding with a flower. She’s held captive from spring to winter in a dark castle shrouded by magic.

That alone would be enough, but let’s look at the other parallels. You’ve got a massive age difference (Beast was 21 when the castle was cursed. I’m assuming it froze his age in place otherwise what a jerk of a witch to curse an 11 year old for not answering the door for a stranger?) There are major levels of hell happening (or would you enjoy spending twenty years frozen as a fork?). And I haven’t even gone into the magical flower significance thing.

Phantom of the Opera

Okay, so the broadway and subsequent movie of Phantom are adaptions from the book Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux, which is in and of itself a retelling of the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale with an opera house twist. But then it got really popular as an opera so there are some echoes of this in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. So layers upon layers in this. But it’s absolutely a Persephone retelling, only unlike most of my other examples, the Hades character is considered the bad guy at the end of the movie. Oh sure, the “angel of music” is a tragically misunderstood bad guy, but no one was cool with him dragging Christine to the dark and creepy underworld of the Opera House for a forced wedding. And again, we’ve got a flower of great significance. She’s not flattered by his romantic attentions, she’s terrified. It’s important that there are versions of this myth being retold that acknowledge the darkness of the original myth.

The Forbidden Game series by L.J Smith

I *loved* this book when I was younger. To the point of obsession. Seriously, read it. It’s amazing. Technically, this book was about Norse mythology, but the Persephone/Hades comparison was brought up by the characters in the book and it fit really well. Julian is a shadow man who falls in love with a bright, sunny, Californian native named Jenny. He tricks her and her friends into crossing into his realm through a game. They’ve got until Midnight to win/escape. But if they lose, he gets to keep Jenny’s soul.

So again, you’ve got the naive girl who personifies spring and all things innocent a new catching the eye of a dark soul living in a “shadow” realm. He lures her there through trickery, not unlike the pomegranate seeds Persephone was tricked into eating. And spoiler alert, she escapes, only to realize she’s still bound to him because of something she did while in his realm. There’s also a lot of flower symbolism.

Spirited Away

There’s a lot more undertones happening in Spirited Away than the Persephone myth, so I wouldn’t exactly call it a retelling, but it still has a lot of elements from the Persephone myth. Chihiro’s family is trapped in the spirit realm because they ate the food there. When Chihiro is accepted into the realm, she is given a new name, just like Kora/Persephone.

Legend

This movie essentially is the Persephone myth, only she gets rescued and there are unicorns. Unicorns, by the way, symbolize innocence, so there’s some significance there.

So basically, the Lord of Darkness decides he wants to kill the last two unicorns of the forest (innocence) and bring darkness to all the land. To do this, he needs a certain princess who is pure of heart, to touch the unicorns and make them vulnerable. When the princess sees the unicorns while playing in the forest and touches one, the trap is sprung. The unicorn she touched has his horn cut off and winter descends upon the land with the loss of that innocence.

Later the princess herself is captured and dragged down the the Lord of Darkness’ realm. He’s attracted to her because she’s innocent and pure so he tries to make her his queen. She’s eventually restored to the normal world and winter ends. A lot more happens in Legend, there’s this whole other protagonist and Lilly is an intelligent princess with some major agency. I’m just pointing out the Persephone parallels.

Those were my top five retellings of the Persephone myth when I was growing up. One thing they all have in common is giving the Persephone figure a voice. I really do think the reason this myth is set on repeat in our culture is that it feels unfinished in its original form. What retelling or Persephone inspired story finished the tale for you?

Mythology Monday: Persephone

January 26, 2015March 30, 2015 / kaitlinbevis / 7 Comments

I touched the flower, feeling the silky petal brush against my hand. The wind pushed me forward forcefully. My bag of pomegranate seeds blew over, spilling around the poppy. My dress flapped against my ankles as chills shot across my skin. I heard crackling and spun around to see the ground freezing around the flower.
The frost crept toward me. The branches above me stretched toward my face, ice inching along the branches. I heard a loud snap and a massive branch broke from the tree and hurtled toward my head.
I screamed and stumbled backward. The branch crashed in front of me, scraping my legs. I ran for the parking lot as fast as I could. The frost closed in, surrounding me. I’d never been claustrophobic, but as the frost cut off my escape path with a solid white wall, I panicked.
Fog rolled in, like cold death, cutting off my view of the park. It curled around me, brushing against my face, arms, and legs. I turned back to the tree and ran faster, my dress tangling between my legs as the fog and icy wind blew against my skin.

The parking lot is the other way! my mind screamed. The other way was cut off by a mountain of ice. I felt as if I was being herded. By ice?
I slipped on the icy ground, falling face first into the frost. Ice crept up my toes and along my legs. I thrashed and screamed. I felt the fog becoming a solid mass above me, pinning me to the ground. The ice piled around me. Am I going to be buried alive?
I dug my nails into the frigid snow in front of me and tried to claw my way out of the frosted death trap. I was so panicked I didn’t feel it when my nails broke against the impenetrable wall of ice, leaving red crescents of blood welling up on sensitive skin. An hysterical sob worked its way out of my throat as I gouged red lines into the ice. The ice was above my knees, snaking its way up my thighs. I shivered.
Shivering’s good, I reminded myself. It means your body hasn’t given up…yet. The cold was painful, like a thousand little knives pricking my skin. A violent tremor went up my spine, sending waves of pain through me.

“Help me!” I screamed, knowing it was futile. I was going to die here.

Except I couldn’t die. Could I? Mom said I was immortal, but was that all-inclusive? Did I have a weakness? Was snow my Kryptonite? If I got hurt, would I heal or would I be trapped in an injured body in pain forever?

I suddenly didn’t know if immortality was a good thing or a bad thing. The cold hurt. I was kicking, screaming, and clawing my way out of the frost, but for every inch I gained a mountain piled around me. I thought I heard a man’s laughter on the wind, the sound somehow colder than the ice freezing me into place.
The ground before my outstretched hand trembled. The shaking increased. The earth lurched beneath me. The surface cracked and the sound was so loud that for a moment all I could hear was high-pitched ringing in my ears. The ground split into an impossibly deep crevice. My voice went hoarse from screaming as I peered into the endless abyss, trapped and unable to move away from the vertigo-inducing edge. A midnight black chariot, drawn by four crepuscular horses that looked like they’d been created out of the night sky, surged from the crevice. I ducked my head into the snow with a frightened whimper as they passed over my prone body.
The fog around me dissipated as the ice melted away from my body. Terrified, I sprang to my feet, stopping when I was eye-to-eye with one of the frightening horses pulling the chariot. For a moment I could do nothing but stare into its huge, emotionless eyes. A strangled whimper tore from my throat and the horse snorted at me.
They weren’t black; they weren’t anything. They were an absence of color and of light, a nauseating swirling void. They hurt to look at. My head ached, and my stomach lurched in mutiny. I clenched my fists and turned to the driver.

His electric blue eyes met mine, and he seemed to see everything I’d done and everything I’d ever do. I had the strange sensation I’d been judged and found wanting. No way this guy was human. His skin could have been carved from marble; his hair was the same disorienting black as the horses. A terrifying power emanated from his tall, statuesque frame.

I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move. His ebony cape billowed behind him as he marched toward me. At the grasp of his hand I snapped back to life and jerked away from him.
“We have to get out of here.”
“Let me go!” I yelled, yanking my arm away. He closed in on me, pushing me toward the chariot. I struggled against him, shrieking with rage when he picked me up and slung me over his back like a sack of potatoes.
I punched his back, kicking my legs. “Let me go! Someone help me! Help!”
I recalled the instructor of some self-defense class long lost in memory reminding me dead weight was harder to carry than a thrashing captive. My body rebelled at the idea of going limp so I pushed aside his cape, pulled his shirt up and raked my torn and ragged nails across his bare skin. His hands jerked in surprise and I slid off his back and onto the hard ground.

My breath left my body as I hit the ground with enough force to make me dizzy. With strength I didn’t know I possessed, I scrambled away, clawing at him as he pulled me back.
“Enough!” he shouted. “We don’t have time for this! I have to get you out of here!”
“No!” I yelled. Did he really just expect me to go Okay, strange creepy man, I’ll get in your scary chariot of death. No problem?
His furtive gaze took in the empty park, and he swore in a voice as smooth as silk. “I’m sorry.”
My eyes widened in surprise as his lips pressed against mine. I went wild, hitting and scratching and pushing for all I was worth. He didn’t budge. He exhaled, and I sank lifelessly into his arms.

~@~

Kore/Kora as she was called before her rise to Queen of the Underworld, was the Goddess of Spring, and by all accounts gorgeous. Almost every god wanted to court her, but her mother, Demeter, was determined to keep her child sheltered from the corruption of Olympus. Little did Demeter know that Zeus had already negotiated their daughter’s hand in marriage to Hades, Lord of the Underworld.

Technically, as her father, it was Zeus’ right at the time to give away his daughter to whomever he chose. But Demeter was a terrifying goddess when she was angry, so he advised his brother to keep the whole him giving permission to marry Kora thing under the radar.

Hades complies and instead of a long engagement, he waits until Kora wanders off alone/with a nymph friend or two to pick some flowers in a meadow. Then, with some help from Gaia, he breaks open the ground and charges forth with his creepy chariot of death, grabs the startled goddess, and drags her to the Underworld.

The moment Kora is raped/married, her name changes to Persephone. That’s not uncommon in Mythology. Names change to reflect a god’s purpose or role. Most gods had a whole slew of names depending on the occasion. Think of them more like titles.

Naturally, Demeter is furious and terrified for her daughter when she learns of her abduction, but more on her next week. This myth is about Persephone. Actually, part of the reason I wrote Persephone is that every version of the myth I heard growing up focused on Demeter’s anguish at losing her daughter, Hades and Zeus’ backroom deal, and the people suffering through winter. Not a single one of them focused on what Persephone was going through or her perspective of the myth. She’s treated like an item, a prize, by literally every being in the myth and every telling of it. Never as a personified concept like the rest of the gods.

Persephone’s transformation should be a fascinating story in and of itself, but we never get to hear it. In this one fell swoop, she goes from an innocent victim content to pick flowers all day to The Iron Queen. People didn’t fear Hades the way they feared Persephone. He was, by all accounts, a pretty laid back god. Persephone on the other hand was a force to be reckoned with. I wanted to tell that story. And I wasn’t the only one. Persephone has been retold to account for that lack over and over and over again throughout time. But more on that Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Persephone knows that eating the food of the Underworld will bind her to the land and negate any hope of future rescue. Apparently gods don’t actually need to eat to stay alive, because she resists the temptation for months until she’s tricked into eating 3-7 pomegranate seeds (the number varies depending on the myth, as does the flowers she’s picking, the number of nymphs with her, and any other detail. Myths were oral retellings and when they were written down, every author added their own spin. So never assume anyone got the details “wrong.” They’re just telling a different version) by the god Ascalapus, Hades’ gardener.

The pomegranate wasn’t just chosen for its taste. In terms of symbolism, it’s a pretty loaded fruit. It stands for death, fertility, and royalty. All things Persephone.

Ascalapus gets turned into a screech owl in retribution for his crime, and when Persephone is finally rescued from the Underworld, she’s still forced to return to the Underworld for a month every year for each seed she ate. And that, friends, is where Winter comes from.

Myths evolve and change over time with each retelling. Wednesday, I’ll be talking about some Persephone retellings throughout time, but I want to hear your favorite version of the myth? What details changed? Why?